Читать книгу Entanglement - Katy Mahood, Katy Mahood - Страница 15

Hand in hand, Stella and John walked south from the hospital to Bayswater Road, crossing over into the park. By a tall plane tree they turned deeper into the green, to a place where the grass was high and only the tips of the tallest buildings were visible. John set down his heavy bag and spread a blanket on the ground. Tugged by a sudden wave of tiredness, Stella lowered herself next to him. She slid a silky scarlet bundle from John’s bag and smoothed it over her knee. It was only a cheap thing, but it pleased her, that red dress. Her wedding dress. She smiled at John, then slipped out of her T-shirt and jeans and pulled the dress over her head.

Now that he was out in the daylight, Charlie realised how drunk he’d become. I’ll walk it off, he thought to himself, heading south towards Hyde Park through the tall backstreets of Marylebone townhouses. He ran his hands along the black railings, silting his fingers with city grime, like he had as a kid on his way to school. School had been a sanctuary for Charlie: the one place where he had no responsibility for anyone else. He had run there every morning, feeling himself grow lighter as his fingertips had passed along the railings, arriving out of breath with an empty belly, a hungry mind and filthy hands. Dirty London air, he said out loud at the memory, smiling to think how free he felt surrounded by the noise and dirt; the kind of freedom you only feel in a place where you know you belong. He was a child of North London: Archway and Finsbury Park and a few places in between, but as an adult he felt as if the whole of the city was his. He tipped his head back and looked at the sky. When the sun shone like this, there was nowhere more full of possibility than London, he thought, rising for a moment on a wave of hope. Perhaps everything really would be alright.

By the time he reached Speakers’ Corner, the high from the beer had dissolved and he found himself heavy with fatigue. He weaved his way through the crowd gathered around a man on an upturned box who was shouting about class war and revolution, walking on into the park until he came to a huddle of trees, where the long grass brushed his legs. He lay down, listening to the swill of distant traffic, the hum of planes and the occasional shriek of a bird. He closed his eyes and for a short time he slept.

All across the skyline the swaying leaves shimmered, unsheltered by clouds, unnerved by the sudden, unexpected heat. Stella squinted into the brightness. October wasn’t supposed to be hot like this, and yet somehow in the early part of the month, it always was. The amber warmth of a low-slung autumn sun enveloped her as she touched the softness of her belly. So this is what it means to be entangled. She thought of the theory John had explained many times before: a collision of particles, an existence transformed so that even far apart they respond to one another. It was barely three months since that evening when they’d sat somewhere not far from here, cap and gown tossed to one side, kisses pungent with cheap red wine. Perhaps it had been the wine, or the heat, or simply the sweet musk of one another. How they had unleashed a need more urgent than their usual caution neither of them could say. But from that collision, their path was set.

Charlie woke with a jolt from a dream-state of falling. Glinting in the grass was a pile of change from his pocket, and tangled among it the chain of a silver St Christopher medal. Annie had given it to him when he left for university – a talisman, she’d said, though it was her, truly, who’d needed protection. And right enough she’d come to stay with him in Edinburgh the first moment she could, climbing onto the train at Kings Cross the morning after she’d finished her last O level. Charlie sat up and rubbed his face, trying to forget about the bruise on Annie’s wrist.

John knotted a tie around his neck and lay down next to Stella, watching the flimsy city clouds scudding in the high blue, pressing his palm to hers.

‘She’s going to look like you, I’ll bet.’

‘She?’

He laughed again and shrugged. ‘Fifty-fifty chance.’

Stella leaned up on her elbow, studying his face as he stared at the sky. Then, with a jerk, John checked his watch and leapt to his feet, all at once in a hurry. Stella clambered after him, but she couldn’t keep up. The fabric of her dress bunched between her legs as she ran and her heart was pounding as it tried, with difficulty, to meet the competing demands of her own body and the tiny but hungry one growing within. Panting for breath, she stopped and pressed her hand to her belly. John turned and called out. Stella! He ran back towards her, not noticing the dark-haired man lying on the grass a little way off.

Charlie raised his head to see two people running. A tall, angular man dashing ahead of a flush-cheeked girl in a red dress. She stopped a little way past Charlie, her palm pressed to her middle, but the tall man didn’t notice. The young woman looked quite out of breath and Charlie wondered if he should help, but as he began to move, the man turned and called her name and started to run back. Charlie watched them as they leaned in close, the girl’s face softening as the tall man took her hand. They walked away together and he gazed after them, feeling a stark aloneness and an ache for Beth that lodged in his chest.

At Marble Arch, John helped Stella onto the back platform of a bus as it was pulling away. As they rumbled along the Edgware Road, with its hookah pipes and coffee shops, Stella looked out at the jostling crowds of Saturday shoppers, while John glanced at his watch and jiggled his long legs. Sitting in a drift of old confetti between the columns of the register office was Liam McKearnan, John’s research partner and best friend, and Niamh, his heavily pregnant wife.

Niamh hauled herself to her feet and held out a posy of purple flowers. ‘You ready?’ she said.

Stella swapped her sandals for a pair of electric blue high heels and grinned. ‘Now, I’m ready.’

John held out his hand the wrong way up, so Stella had to turn it over to put on the ring they had bought in Hatton Garden. His skin felt warm and the smooth rounds of his fingernails slid against the flat of her palm as she pressed the gold band into its place on the left. Then Niamh and Liam clapped and Stella and John kissed – and the heels on her blue shoes clacked as they trotted down the stairs and out into the golden blast of October sunshine and traffic noise, clutching the papers of the life that lay before them.

Later, as they walked home beneath the dirty sky of the street-lit inner city, John looked at Stella, his face softened with drink and smiled. ‘Mrs Greenwood,’ he said, ‘I love you.’

Stella pressed her lips against his cheek. ‘I love you too.’

John frowned. ‘For better or worse?’

Stella nodded. ‘Yup. In sickness and in health. All that stuff.’

They both laughed, unable then to imagine their life together as being anything less than golden and fearless.